Spirit-led Rescue Around the Lake

By David Hobbs

One summer we joined some of the church families going up to Little Grass Valley Reservoir beyond LaPorte to camp for the weekend at one of the campgrounds. Saturday afternoon the weather was beautiful and people from our group were fishing, swimming, or loafing around their campsites. I decided to take a hike and spend some time with the Lord.
The campground was on a finger of the lake where a stream flowed in. I made my way down the shore until I reached the tip of the finger. Luckily I was able to cross the stream on the bridge the access road used as it wound around the lake going from campground to campground. Once on the other side of the inlet I continued working my way along the shore, soon finding and following a horse trail, all the time praising the Lord, singing, and meditating on Him, things that I knew would draw the Holy Spirit close. All the time I felt His presence, and it was wonderful: a glorious day and a precious time with my God.
About a half mile down the other side of the lake I left the trail and made my way to the lake shore, having to slide down a rocky slope to get there. Once in this secluded and beautiful spot I pulled out my pocket Bible, found a passage, and began to read God’s word aloud (another way I’ve found to bring the felt-presence of the Lord—the Anointing).
Some time later my reverie was abruptly broken when I heard a sharp sound and a strange looking man suddenly appeared, clambering over the rocks in the opposite direction I had been heading. He was wearing a rubber wetsuit top, shorts, and some kind of rubber, flip-flop shoes. His face was flushed, sweat glistened on his brow, and he was panting from exertion. He didn’t look like a happy camper.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I broke the startled silence. He seemed almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“Blankety-blank boat broke down around the point.” He made a vague waving gesture toward the way he had just come. “Say, you don’t have a boat here, do you?” he asked anxiously, his countenance perking up at the thought.
“No, I walked around from the other side. Are you camped over there?” I pointed across the finger. The campground was probably 600 yards distance across the open water, but a mile or more around the way I had come.
“Yeah, and there’s nobody to come and get me. I guess I’ll have to walk all the way around.” That thought dispirited him again and his briefly-energized countenance collapsed. It was obvious he wasn’t dressed for walking, with his bulky wetsuit top, bare legs, and flimsy footwear.
“Sorry, wish there was some way I could help you. Do you want me to hike back over there and get somebody to come get you?”
“Not unless you know someone who has a boat. My buddy’s off up the lake somewhere in his boat; no telling when he’ll be back.”
I shrugged, not knowing anyone at camp with a boat either.
After catching his breath he left, stumbling over the rocks and breaking through the brush along the lake shore. “This guy is definitely not ‘George of the Jungle’,” I thought as I listened to his thrashing recede in the distance.
I kept wishing there was something I could do for the guy. Then it occurred to me to pray. “Lord,” I said, “please send this poor man some help.”
After finishing my prayer I turned and looked out over the lake and was startled to see a boat with two men in it coming on a bee-line across the lake toward me, as if it had appeared out of nowhere! As it got closer, it veered a little to the side in the direction the man had taken. “Well I’ll be!” I could hardly believe my eyes. The boat kept coming closer and closer, then, about 100 feet from shore it turned and started up the shoreline toward me. About this time the stranded man must have seen the boat and he began shouting from down the shore. “This is going to be great,” I thought, “a rescue right before my eyes.”
But instead of stopping, the boat kept on up the shoreline, now getting farther away from the hapless boater, whose frantic shouts I could barely hear in the distance. About the time the boat got opposite me the men seemed to notice the cries and cut the engine. Then they saw me sitting there on a rock. “Is there a problem?” one of them shouted in to me.
“Yeah this guy’s boat broke down and he’s stranded over here.”
“Where’s his boat?”
“His boat’s around the point, but he’s back down that way,” I pointed in the direction the man had gone.
The men conferred with one another. Finally they seemed to take my word for it. “We’ll go back and get him,” one of them said.
Sure enough they turned the boat around and headed back along the shoreline until they met the man scrambling desperately towards them. The man was so excited to be rescued he was practically babbling in his joy. They found a place they could put the boat in next to a rock and he half stepped and half slid from the rock into the boat. Then they headed out across the lake toward camp.
I kind of wished I had asked them to take me too, to spare me that long walk back around the lake, but before I knew it they were gone out into the lake.
“Your work here is done; you can go back now,” the Holy Spirit seemed to whisper to my heart.
Then I realized the whole thing had been a setup! God had positioned me right here to be the necessary factor in this unknown man’s rescue—from praying in the boat to being the go-between for him and his rescuers. I was the necessary element but none of the men would ever realize the part that God and I His servant had played in the rescue.
“How many times must God do this:” I thought on the long walk back, “intervene in people’s lives using men or even angels without them being aware of, let alone thankful for, His mercy and help. And how many more times would God use me in this way if I was only more available to Him?”
Back at the camp I tried to share with my wife and others the divine drama I had just been part of, but they didn’t seem to get it either. “Well, good for you,” and “Praise the Lord,” were about the best responses I could get out of them.
But it didn’t matter. It was still exciting working for Him, even if nobody but Him ever knew or cared.